Typically, business requirements change over time to satisfy customer needs. In this regard, computer software is modified to meet the changed business requirements. These modifications can result in different versions of same computer software (i.e., source code). Every version can include one or more unique differences compared to other versions to meet business requirements or to improvise the previous software version. Many a times, it is important to know the significant differences between the different versions of same computer software for analyzing software lifecycle aspects within the same release and across different releases.
Generally, software versions are compared on a textual basis by using standard tools. Such method of comparison allows convenient visualization of the differences between the software versions. However, a metadata repository supports a plurality of different domain specific development objects (i.e., metadata object types). Further, changes to the content of the metadata repository may have significant impact on the functional aspects of a business application, user interface and the like. To compare the different versions of the development object using standard version comparison, the whole development object is taken into account. Further, the standard version comparison detects all differences, which leads to a huge list of differences and is a time consuming process to analyze the differences manually. Also, the development objects are not only based on source code, but a significant amount of information is available in the form of the structure of the development objects. As a disadvantage, there is no evaluation or ranking of the severity of differences and there is no filtering mechanism to search only for specific differences (e.g., to detect incompatible changes, to detect important structural changes such as enhancements and the like). Therefore, it is desirable to provide a method which enables comparison of the different versions of the development object based on the specific difference (e.g., structural change, behavioral change and the like).